In the President’s Report, at the most recent SRC meeting on the 30th of July, there was information concerning the disestablishment of the staff position “Communications Officer” and the creation of a new “Strategic Communications Role”.
According to the report, the position has a new focus on “helping students run campaigns, establishing relationships with related groups such as NTEU as well as some crossover with the Communication Officer position.”
ANUSA President Cam Wilson made clear that the new position has been established to ensure that students remain focused on ideas and policy, whereas the staff should provide the skills to help the students. The description of the new role description includes “[managing] online and offline platforms for the organisation”.
Jennifer Edmunds is the current Communications Officer. During the meeting Wilson stated that ANUSA has encouraged the current Communications Officer to apply for the Strategic Communications role. There is, however, no guarantee that she will remain employed by ANUSA after the position is officially disestablished. There was discussion of an overlapping transitional period between the old and new roles.
Edmunds was responsible for personally creating the ANUSA Student diaries, all of the student survival guides and the O Week and Bush Week hoodies worn by the organisers. Edmunds has also been provided training to use OrgSync: an online community management program for the Higher Education sector.
In the meeting, Wilson was asked whether he had consulted any of the new tickets running for election about the changes to the role. Additionally, he was asked whether there was a formal meeting with the council in order to discuss these changes. To both questions Wilson admitted that there was no consultations outside of the current executive about the changes to staffing.
“I acknowledge we should have done more consultation around this,” said Wilson.
The new Strategic Communications role is advertised on seek.com at:http://www.seek.com.au/job/26901252.
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